Should one be thankful since the “probability” that one exists is so low ?

 

Should one be thankful since the “probability” that one exists is so low ?

Not really - thinking of probability in these terms is meaningless when we don’t understand a lot of things - eg consciousness, qualia, creativity etc.

It’s like buying a KitKat and asking what is the probability that this exact KitKat is in my hand right now out of the billions that have been manufactured and why KitKat and not katkit (ie why did they name it KitKat) etc.

Such probabilities are meaningless.

I understand where this line of thinking comes from - wanting people to appreciate life more given how “improbable” it is that we are here. But that’s not the reason to appreciate life in my opinion and this kind of reasoning - first of all is not useful and secondly doesn’t have much meaning as I said.

There are reasons to appreciate life of course even though we don’t understand a lot of them yet (since philosophy, including moral philosophy hasn’t made much progress to answer these).

I do have a conjecture in this aspect - I think there is possibly some principle of morality which says knowledge creation is moral - and humans are the only systems in the universe we know of that create explanatory knowledge- so human life is moral. Of course, knowledge creation within the boundaries of “human rights”.

And with knowledge creation (and creativity) - all problems are soluble. Including the problems you think cannot solve in your life and due to which you want to end it. They are soluble - this is a deep principle of epistemology which makes suicide illogical in most cases.

I say in most cases since in some cases our present knowledge doesn’t solve the problem and the person is meanwhile in deep suffering (eg some terminal illness with no cure in sight where the person is suffering tremendously ).